Inside the recent communication blitz concerning troubles on our high streets is often the mention of the move to the experiential use of retail. At one level this can be direct experience use, eg cinemas, while at another is the use within stores of experience to leverage their core products and / or assets.

MyTime on Green Lanes has been pushing the latter with Brian’s Quiz Nights, Vinyl Nights, spiritual events, live music through to transforming the day time café into an evening cocktail bar.

Pomegranate flowers on Aldermans Hill is a relatively recent PG newbie and now Andreas is pushing his own experiential boat out. Targets for his wreath making classes were comprehensively smashed which has given him the confidence to move into flower arranging classes, and even classes for specific groups – the likes of hen party flower arranging gigs.

Both are the sort of proactive, client focused activity, going beyond the standard and intended to delight people.
But don’t let it be one way if we want to keep such outlets, as I’ve posted before, tell retailers what might be attractive to help them help you: previously being totally out of my depth in choosing a run of flower bunches for Mrs as a birthday present, I suggested to Andreas that I give him cash, in return he gives me “flower vouchers” (at this stage read a few suitable annotated comp. slips), I hand over the birthday present and at stages Mrs draws down a chosen bunch of flowers at a time of her choosing.

First one made up today to her specification and she was well chuffed. Andreas is thinking of making more of it for blokes like me who can’t quite decide between the daffodil and the thistle as being the best fit to give. So, it's all of the credit yet with none of the hassle. What could go possibly go wrong!

After an earlier, Tracy Emin inspired, mattress fest highlighted on PGC, last night on the way to the Talkies Here Festival I came across a discarded mattress close to St Johns Church Hall on the Bourne. The previous day revealed a small mattress on Fox Lane near the bridge, before that one on Lakeside at the Fox Lane end, while previous weeks have revealed similarly discarded old mattresses outside The Fox on Fox Lane, on Old Park Road and tastefully laid across the wall on the Fox Lane railway bridge. And that’s just ones seen through my eyes.

Is this a common feature across London or is PG, and perhaps specifically Fox Lane, the old mattress centre of the western world? This one may need the eyes of a whole community to understand.

Much has been made of the death of the high street, but some places are staging a comeback.

The government has announced this Spring a £1.6bn Stronger Towns Fund to help less well-off areas. Six hundred million pounds of that will be shared out to towns which can come up with credible plans to help their high street adapt to the rapidly changing retail environment.

So what does it take to turn a town around? In this programme, Ruth Alexander visits two towns in Cheshire - Northwich and Altrincham - which have tried two quite different approaches to see what works, and what doesn’t.

Presenter: Ruth Alexander
Producer: Elisabeth Mahy

Of course, every town centre has its own strengths and weaknesses. Palmers Green doesn't have an impressive old market building, unlike Altrincham, but it does have a couple of large empty shops that might provide suitable spaces.

Waxing and waning over the years, including its transition from Safeway, Morrison's in PG now seems to have slumped to a new low. The cost cuts so immediately evident locally when the new company CEO took over might well have gone too far. Walking into the store it’s no longer unusual to find near empty shelves reflecting a scene I presume will hold UK wide in the event of stockpiling for an anticipated zombie apocalypse, or what we are given to believe will apply in the event of a no-ferry no-deal Brexit when food is scarce. When we hear so much about the UK supermarkets fantastically integrated supply chains to get food onto their shelves where do the bread, eggs, milk, vegetables and such planned for Morrison's PG actually end up so many times a week? Obvious signs like this would have a hedge fund manager shorting the stock; just like Morrison's’ supply chain now manages so well in its own “specialism”.

Spotted today from a W6 while heading down Aldermans Hill, a couple transporting a double mattress slung across a Morrison's trolley going in the opposite direction. Does this deepen the mystery of the PG mattresses, merely provide a new clue or simply be people taking their mattress for a walk in the sunshine.

And so the quest to understand PG’s mattress mystery goes on, this today on Fox Lane, aka mattress central. Could this one have arrived by Morrison's trolley I wondered to myself. Could there be a "mattress hour" when they are secretly secreted about the place or is their placement truly time-random?